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Dyesebel Is the Best Mermaid Princess Show You've Never Seen

In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtitles on Viki. Unfortunately, my region was recently blocked from the site, making the show much harder to find online. To this day, it is still one of the best shows I have ever seen.

Like most telenovelas, Dyesebel is a dramatic episodic narrative that is told over 60 hour-long installments or 120 half-hour installments, depending on where you watch it. The emotionally drive plot can get a bit heavy-handed at times. If you are a fan of fairy tales and romance, it is easy to get swept away by the story and admittedly over the top melodrama. Dyesebel's love for Fredo is unique compared to other romance stories because in her world, mermaids can only fall in love one time. This means that despite all of the hardships she must suffer for falling in love with a human, it would be impossible for her to move on and find love with someone else. That is her tragedy. Even though she wins the heart of a handsome and kind merman who would do anything for her named Erebus, she can never grow to love him in the same way that he loves her. His story is tragic as well, so it's a shame that he comes off as the perfect merman.

The underwater kingdom of Sirenea has its pros and cons compared to other mermaid stories. It is a fully fleshed out world with roles for mermaids and mermen and its own unique fashions and lifestyles. Unfortunately, as a live-action show with a telenovela budget, it has some very cheap CGI effects used to create the illusion of an underwater world. Some parts are done better than others. The bubbles and waves look okay, but Dyesebel's fish friends look rather ridiculous and don't appear to be fully rendered. This shouldn't bother anyone with a decent imagination and a little suspension of disbelief, but I can see how some people might be put off by it. The costumes, on the other hand, are quite detailed and lovely. The mermaids and mermen have beautiful tails in many colors that shimmer in the light. They also wear dazzling accessories on their arms and in their hair made of shells, jewels, and pearls that would be the envy of any land princess. Though the mermaids do not wear anything over their breasts, they are always covered by their hair and blurred out further with visual effects.

Dyesebel's story as the secret princess of a usurped throne is not exactly original, but it creates a great deal of intrigue. The wicked queen Dyangga rules Sirenea with an iron fist after the former Queen Lucia left to become human. Though Dyesebel's adoptive mother, Banak, knows that Dyesebel is the true princess, she never tells her because she fears for her life if Dyangga were to find out. Dyangga also has a daughter named Princess Berbola, who falls for the same human as Dysebel. Berbola is raised to believe that she is the true princess even though her scales do not shine as brightly as Dyesebel's. In Sirenea, the royal family has a genetic trait that makes their scales reflect more light than any of the other merpeople. After Dyesebel's love story is resolved at the end of the show, the story becomes an epic battle to restore the kingdom of Sirenea to its rightful heir. One of the things that makes this show so interesting is how many different subplots revolve around the main story. Every character's tale is fully resolved before the series reaches its conclusion.

Though it a story about mermaids, the show spends plenty of time on land as well. Dyesebel's love, Fredo, is the son of a powerful business owner, making him the modern-day equivalent of a human prince. Personally, I did not find Fredo very likable as a character because he is very simple-minded and reacts horribly when he finally learns Dysebel's secret. However, Dyesebel is so adorable and easy to relate to that we still want her to be with Fredo anyway for the sake of her own happiness. Unlike Hans Christian Andersen's story, Dysebel gives up her beauty to become human instead of her voice, giving it a "Phantom of Opera" or "Beauty and the Beast" style twist. She must find love in spite of her newly deformed face, which makes her life as a human rather difficult. The exchange also prevents Fredo from recognizing her as the mermaid who rescued him from drowning. He obsesses over Dysebel's true face and knows that he wants to be with her, despite already having a girlfriend named Betty, who quickly becomes Dyesebel's rival.

There are so many layers to this story, that make it very addictive and give it plenty of replay value. It's a shame that it is so difficult to watch in America because it is a fantastic show for mermaid lovers. There have been several movie versions created from the original graphic novel prior to this telenovela, but no movie could be fleshed out nearly as well as the series. A more recent telenovela adaptation was made in 2014 starring Anne Curtis as Dyesebel. It had a few story changes, such as her father being a merman, her mother being human, and her rival Betty being an adoptive daughter of her mother in the human world. Only a few episodes of this version are available online, and even fewer with English subtitles. The visual effects are more advanced than the 2008 version, and the series is presented with a feminist spin. In many ways, Dyesebel is a more complex and engaging story than "The Little Mermaid," which is why this show will always be one of my favorites.

Back around 2012, a friend of mine sent me a press release about how Disney was making a new princess show about a little girl from a poor village who becomes a princess overnight when her mother marries the king. The endearing image of the little girl on the press release instantly caught my attention with her unique reddish-brown curls, playful expression, and gorgeous lavender dress that was dripping with pearl accents. Something about this description and image got me so excited for the series that I got to work right away on making a grown-up sized cosplay of Sofia's elegant gown. The series premiered on Disney Junior with a TV special called Once Upon a Princess in which Sofia received her legendary Amulet of Avalor and sang about her insecurities for her future life as a princess heroine in the song "Not Ready To Be a Princess." I loved her instantly. Over the next six years, she took me on a four season-long journey filled with Disney Princesses, fairies, mermaid…

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Hercules, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of last night's trailer in which Larxene of Organization XIII remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart, a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure hearts to open the Door to Darkness. My biggest pe…

We all had lots of fun playing with princess dolls as kids and brushing their hair until it became ratty and tangled. For those of us who are older, there has is the option of purchasing pricier collectible dolls that are made with finer details in their hair and clothes and come with their own stands for display purposes. While princesses have never exactly been lacking in options for collectible dolls, the Disney Princess Designer Collection that was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2011 was the start of something special. Each princess had her own designer dress that looked like it came straight off a modern-day runway. The collection was released alongside lithographs, cards, mugs, and other paraphernalia featuring beautiful matching artwork. The dolls themselves weren't sculpted from your typical Barbie mold. They had fully articulated wrist and elbow joints, salon quality hair that stayed perfectly in place, bigger painted eyes, and long realistic eyelashes that you could actuall…

If you're one of the five people on Earth who still hasn't seen the new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer that dropped this morning, I'm here to break it down for you. The trailer featured roughly the first half of a scene in which all of the living voice actresses for the Disney Princesses reprised their roles as Vanellope snuck into their secret internet headquarters that was presented at the D23 Expo last year. A screenshot released last week previewed the scene with Ariel missing, but now we see that she was just off-screen combing her hair with her favorite dinglehopper in a blinged out version of pink tea dress along with lots more animation of other the princesses in their oddly disproportionate new CGI style animation. Let's take a look.

For starters, it's a bit odd how Ariel and Cinderella have swapped the levels of bling on their ballgowns. In the 1950 animated movie, Cinderella's dress appeared to have made from a lightweight silvery-white fabric emblazoned w…

The internet went a little crazy when Entertainment Weekly released Disney's first promo photos of the fully costumed actors from their upcoming Aladdin remake last week. Many were disappointed with what they saw, which unfortunately tends to be the case for live-action remakes. For instance, Aladdin's signature purple vest was changed to red, making it closer to the Broadway version of the show. He was also given a relatively nice shirt underneath, which is more than a little confusing for those of us who remember how poor he was in the original film. Will Smith as the Genie looked a little too much like a normal human instead of a mystical blue entity, but apparently that's still coming. Princess fans were most excited to see previews of Jasmine's wardrobe. In terms of quantity, the internet did not disappoint. We now have images of three of Jasmine's looks that will be featured in the movie as well as a peek at her new handmaiden.

In my "Little Mermaid" origins post, I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them has a theatrical release date, and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big scree…

Sofia the First, everyone's favorite princess-in-training, has met every official Disney Princess that existed when her show began with the sole exception of Pocahontas. The power of her purple amulet granted her the ability to summon famous princesses whenever she was in trouble. Technically, she never met Anna either, but the episode "Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle" implied that she was supposed to meet her but got Olaf instead because her amulet was on the fritz. About a year ago, her amulet turned pink and granted her new powers. It now sends her to help princesses, meaning that the chances of her meeting Pocahontas at this point are virtually nonexistent. Why did they acknowledge every other princess movie except this one? Actually, they did acknowledge the 1995 animated classic in an episode of Sofia, but it was very subtle.

In the 2015 episode of Sofia the First, "The Secret Library," Sofia discovers a hidden passageway beneath her castle where a boat …